New Malay Middle-Class Lifestyles and Culture

Abstract

This chapter examines several interrelated issues pertaining to the new Malay middle-class lifestyles and culture, such as living conditions, asset ownership, consumption patterns, and leisure activities. At the same time, it also discusses an important issue in class analysis — that is, the self-evaluation by members of the new Malay middle class of their own class positions — to see if their subjective evaluations match our objective definition of the new middle-class. This chapter aims to show that the new Malay middle class lifestyles and cultural preferences are not homogenous; and that while the more affluent sections of the new Malay middle class have developed distinct high-status lifestyles and cultural preferences, many still have lifestyles and cultural preferences that do not differentiate them as a social category distinct from the lower classes.KeywordsPolitical EconomyLiving ConditionMiddle ClassSubjective EvaluationLeisure ActivityThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.